Criticism
Using a metaphor from John Backus, assignment statements in von Neumann languages split programming into two worlds. The first world consists of expressions, an orderly mathematical space with potentially useful algebraic properties: most computation takes place here. The second world consists of statements, a disorderly mathematical space with few useful mathematical properties (structured programming can be seen as a limited heuristic that does apply in this space, though).
Backus claimed that there exists now in computer science a vicious cycle where the long standing emphasis on von Neumann languages has continued the primacy of the von Neumann computer architecture, and dependency on it has made non-von Neumann languages uneconomical and thus limited their further development: the lack of widely available and effective non-von Neumann languages has deprived computer designers of the motivation and the intellectual foundation needed to develop new computer architectures.
Some examples of non-von Neumann languages are: APL, FP, FL, J, Lucid, NGL, ZPL, Mercury, and Plankalkül.
Read more about this topic: Von Neumann Programming Languages
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